Well-deserved title of 'deporter in chief'

Immigrant rights activisits demonstrate during a “National Day of Action” April 10 in New York City. They pressed for immigration reform and for the Obama administration to stop its mass deportations.

SAN ANTONIO — Among the worst calculations ever by President Barack Obama has been the one in which he imagined that increased deportations and border security would impress enough key Republicans. And then, the theory went, they'd skip hand in hand to immigration reform.

It was a fool's errand. Years in, it should have become clear that the opposition was playing him like a fiddle — and not just on this issue.

On the budget, he finally refused to knuckle under — because the price was repeal of his signature Affordable Care Act.

Not as important were the families torn apart, mostly Latino and non-voting, on his way to earning the title of “deporter in chief.”

The president has protested that this crackdown occurred because Congress increased funding for enforcement and that he was obligated to enforce toughened laws. And he counseled patience, while also being impatient with and intolerant of the gathering storm of anger in the voting populations that helped elect him. Twice.

Latinos considered the alternatives and gave Obama plenty of rope. But a report April 6 by the New York Times demonstrated how he hung himself with it. It detailed how the administration's enforcement has been tougher by design — the administration's.

The next Democratic presidential nominee can thank the president for giving the other party this opening with Latinos, presuming the GOP doesn't nominate a firebreather.

Obama said he was focusing on serious criminals in the undocumented community. But, as the Times story by Ginger Thompson and Sarah Cohen explained, two-thirds of his nearly 2 million deportation cases committed minor infractions or had no criminal record.

Removals involving convictions for entering or re-entering the country without documents tripled in the Obama administration. Violators who previously would not have been exposed to formal charges, were. The administration expanded the use of expedited proceedings, fewer options to fight removals.

And the president's expansion of Secure Communities, a partnership with local law enforcement, put increased numbers under scrutiny. Removals followed.

Yes, the president deferred deportations of so-called Dreamers, people brought to this country as children. He said we will not deport family members of those in the military. But patience is now gone in much of the immigrant community and he is reviewing policies to make them “more humane.”

Folks who just wanted to work have been removed, families crippled, supporters hung out to dry. Where has the humanity been these last four or five years?

Republicans, of course, illogically deride Obama as the tyrant who refuses to enforce laws or secure the border. He's gone above and beyond. They should be cheering him.

Good people have been harmed.

Possible GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush said a few weeks back that immigrants who come here without documents do so out of an “act of love” for their families.

The president certainly knows this — rendering his über enforcement all the more cold and cynical.

The Senate passed immigration reform but the U.S. House is looking like the place good ideas go to die. Even a watered-down DREAM Act — in which immigrants join the military — is viewed as too generous. Huh? They're not worthy enough to fight and die for this country?

At the very least, the president should stop deporting undocumented parents of U.S. citizen children and all students who might have been allowed to stay under the DREAM Act.

But even with belated relief, he will have to live down a deserved title of “deporter in chief.”